Bill Roedy on What Makes Business Rock
Bill Roedy was chairman and chief executive of MTV Networks International. In this role, he ran all of MTV Networks' global multimedia operations for the brands MTV: including Music Television, Nickelodeon, VH-1, VIVA, TMF: The Music Factory, Game One, Comedy Central, and Paramount Comedy. He also has received numerous honors for his corporate and personal contributions to a range of humanitarian causes. I interviewed him about his latest book called What Makes Business Rock: Building the Worlds Largest Global Networks. You can follow him on Twitter @billroedy. In this interview, I asked him about how got his cool job, how he made MTV appeal to different countries, and more.
How did you originally get your position at MTV and what were your most pressing challenges in your first few years?
I was recruited from a fantastic career at HBO to move to London and lead a new channel called MTV Europe. It was a move that had lots of risk and I left many friends behind in Los Angeles, but it was one of the best decisions I ever made. All start ups are challenging. You need an entrepreneurial spirit of never accepting no for an answer, breaking the traditional rules, and risk taking. Two of the biggest challenges when we started were getting distribution with no infrastructure and developing a united business across Europe, which had not been done before.
When doing business in a new country, what strategies do you use to appeal to different cultures?
The guiding force behind everything we did was to respect and reflect local cultures. This included designing a product that truly connected with the consumer in a sustainable way. We were local before local was cool.
How do you believe social media has impacted global corporations, such as MTV?
In every way – from promoting and marketing in an efficient, impactful way, to adding a new dimension to the programming.
Can you describe some ways in which you helped build the MTV brand across the world?
What Makes Business Rock
Distribution – an aggressive, creative, and relentless strategy that included free to air terrestrial frequencies. We made a revolutionary decision to beam MTV behind the Iron Curtain for free by buying space on a new satellite at a massive cost. It was a huge gamble but it certainly paid off. Ultimately though MTV designed programming for young people, giving them a voice and using it as a vehicle for cultural exchange.
What business lessons did you learn from Bono, Nelson Mandela, Murdoch and others you cite in your book?
From Bono as well as well as Winston Churchill – “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.” But I would have added a few more nevers. From Nelson Mandela – the power of inclusion and forgiveness. And from countless others – the need to do something good in the world. For example, global health efforts including fighting HIV/AIDS and bringing vaccinations to children. GAVI has saved the lives of 5 million children in the past ten years and has a plan to save another 4 million by 2015. They are proving that doing good is good for business.
